Themes
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Stick to one theme. Too many themes means you end up saying nothing. One theme means your audience has room for interpretation.
- This does not, mean, however, that stories cannot have many themes. It’s just that all these themes should be cohesively tied together.
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The theme is not the message. A work can explore a theme deeply without having an explicit message and still be profound. The message imparts an idea into the audience.
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Pose a theme as a question that is answered by the characters in the story or which directly affects the protagonist. The theme is not one word but an idea.
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Story is an instrument by which you unite ideas and emotions—where you create epiphanies for the audiences at will through aesthetic emotion. Stories combine ideas with emotion to give an immediate meaningful emotional experience.
- In contrast to everyday experiences where meaning is arrived at through introspection
- The ideas of a story are expressed through sensation, perception, and emotion, appealing to the human aspect unsatiated by reason alone.
- The storyteller is dangerous because through his stories, he conveys an idea charged with emotion. Still, an artist is in no obligation to be socially responsible, only to tell the truth of what life really is like.
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The premise of a story is the idea that inspires the writer’s desire to create a story. The controlling idea is the story’s ultimate meaning expressed through the action and aesthetic emotion of the last act’s climax. Remember: The premise needn’t be kept. Evolve the writing. Discover.
- The controlling idea is both the theme, and a constraint set to guide storytelling.
- If you cannot identify the controlling idea, you cannot captivate the audience.
- The controlling idea may be expressed in a single sentence, describing how (value) and why (cause) life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end.
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There are three kinds of Controlling Ideas:
- Idealistic - expresses optimism, what we wish life to be. The story culminates on a positive idea.
- Pessimistic - expresses cynicism, life as we dread it, but know it so often is. The story culminates on a negative idea.
- Ironic - expresses the dual nature of existence — simultaneously positive and negative, merging idealism with pessimism.
- Irony is the truest to reality, and it is also the most difficult to write, requiring dee wisdom.
- It requires a climax that makes both a positive and negative statement, said clearly and unambiguously, and said so that the positives and negatives don’t cancel each other out.
A Compelling Idea
- Irony makes the theme compelling. Irony makes for a good hook as it shows the duality of life 1
- A good log line makes a promise.
- A good log line considers its audience and cost of making (for marketability)
- A good idea says what the story is about in a straightforward manner. Specificity is key.
- It implies a good title that summarizes the scene 2
- It is market-tested by pitching the idea to people. Gauge how interested people are from the idea of the story.
Conveying Meaning
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We can view storytelling as the creative demonstration of truth—the story as a living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea to event. The event structure is the means to express and prove this idea without requiring exposition.
- A story tells you its meaning. The author does not dictate its meaning.
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Your story should surprise you again and again. Beautiful story design is a combination of the subject found, the imagination at work, and the mind loosely, but wisely executing their craft.
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Progressions build by moving dynamically between the positive and negative charges of the values at stake in the story
- In this sense, a story is a dialectical debate between a thesis and antithesis.
- The climax of the story ends up as the synthesis — where one idea dominates the other to give a decisive meaning.
- Use the thesis and antithesis to make the other stronger—giving more punch to the story. Not only that, but they serve to make the story “tell” rather than “preach”.
- Remember: If there was no contentious disagreement regarding the theme, it’s not substantive or interesting because the audience already knows it—it’s boring or comes off as pretentious.
- Thus, as a storyteller, entertain the opposite idea to your premise. The proof of your vision is not how well you assert the theme, but its victory over the enormously powerful forces you array against it.